It’s a delicate thing to ask, but the fate of humankind is at stake. Is Donald Trump … OK?

Erratic Behavior Brings The Donald’s Sanity into Question

President joins chorus of both Democrats and Republicans who belief Trump is ‘unfit’

UPDATED WITH PRESIDENT OBAMA’S AUG. 2 COMMENTS

BY ABQ FREE PRESS STAFF

President Obama has taken the unprecedented step of calling Donald Trump unfit to be president and called on Republicans to denounce his candidacy.

At a press event with the Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the White House, issued the strongest rebuke yet to Trump and to Republican leaders who who said may have made “hollow” repudiations of Trump’s positions.

Trump, the billionaire and reality TV star, is “unfit” and “woefully unprepared” to be president, Obama said on Tuesday, signalling a breakdown of US politics as usual. He urged leaders of the Republican party to take the unprecedented step of denouncing their nominee and did little to dispel fears that Trump would pose a threat to US and global security.

“Yes, I think the Republican nominee is unfit to serve as president,” Obama said during a joint press conference Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the White House. “I said so last week [at the Democratic national convention], and he keeps on proving it. The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family [the name for a family whose relative has died in service] that had made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn’t appear to have basic knowledge around critical issues in Europe, in the Middle East, in Asia means that he’s woefully unprepared to do this job.”

“I think I was right and Mitt Romney and John McCain were wrong on certain policy issues but I never thought that they couldn’t do the job. And had they won, I would have been disappointed but I would have said to all Americans: this is our president and I know they’re going to abide by certain norms and rules and common sense, will observe basic decency, will have enough knowledge about economic policy and foreign policy and our constitutional traditions and rule of law that our government will work and then we’ll compete four years from now to try and win an election.

“But that’s not the situation here. And that’s not just my opinion. That is the opinion of many prominent Republicans. There has to come a point at which you say enough. The alternative is that the entire party, the Republican party, effectively endorses and validates the positions that are being articulated by Mr Trump. And as I said in my speech last week, I don’t think that actually represents the views of a whole lot of Republicans.”

On Monday, the Toronto Star, Canada’s leading newspaper, went on record with what many Democrats and a growing number of Republicans have been wondering.

Which is, is the self-described New York billionaire mentally unbalanced?

The implications are huge. Even if he were unbalanced, now that he’s the Republican nominee, how could be be removed from the ballot? Who would replace him? If he were elected, would the military recognize his authority. Top generals have already said they wouldn’t follow his orders to resume the torture of terrorism suspects. And what about those nuclear codes?

The Star’s article is likely to set off a fire storm in the U.S. media. It might lead to a call from Trump to boycott or even invade Canada.

It was tiptoed around for a full year by Republicans and Democrats and the media alike. And then, on Wednesday, Michael Bloomberg hoisted it onto the stage of the Democratic National Convention.

His plea for Hillary Clinton: “Let’s elect a sane, competent person.”

The compliment barely disguised an extraordinary allegation. The billionaire former mayor of New York City was suggesting that Donald Trump is not sane himself.

Bloomberg’s remark was a sign of a quiet shift over the last month in the mainstream discussion of the Republican presidential nominee. Once unmentionable, questions about Trump’s mental health have started to bubble into respectable American forums as he has inched closer to the nuclear codes of the world’s mightiest military while behaving stranger than ever.

It’s a delicate thing to ask, but the fate of humankind is at stake. Is Donald Trump … OK?

“Donald Trump is not of sound mind,” conservative Stephen Hayes wrote two weeks ago in the Weekly Standard.

“Have we stopped to appreciate how crazy Donald Trump has gotten recently?” liberal Ezra Klein wrote last week on Vox.

He “appears haunted by multiple personality disorders,” conservative David Brooks wrote last week in the New York Times.

“We can gloss over it, laugh about it, analyze it, but Donald Trump is not a well man,” Stuart Stevens, chief strategist to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, wrote last week on Twitter.

Stevens, the most prominent political figure to persistently broach the subject, conceded that he is “no doctor or psychiatrist.” But he said in an interview that the available evidence leads to two possible conclusions: either Trump has a substance abuse problem, which appears unlikely, or “there is something definitely off about him.”

“I’m sure you saw Mr. Trump’s medical report released in December of last year, which described him as perhaps the healthiest individual to ever be elected President (paraphrasing) — I refer you to that,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in an email.

But that brief report explicitly addressed only physical matters like blood pressure, not mental health. And its extreme grandiosity, unprecedented in a campaign medical report, was precisely the kind of eyebrower-raiser that has caused apprehension about his stability.

He boasts of his own unparalleled magnificence. He creates and promotes wild conspiracy theories. He tells easily disprovable lies. He fails to finish sentences before he gets distracted by unrelated thoughts. He appears to fly into a wounded rage at mild criticism.

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1 Comment

Bob

August 15, 2016, 5:51 pm

Who’s calling who unfit? Crooked, lying Hillary called him unfit too! Alco, how come this paper doesn’t give crooked, lying Hillary equal time with its political cartoons- I have several that I can forward, if you’d like?